Jilin: 10.7666 million mu of grain crops have been planted
The Jilin provincial government mentioned today that as of the 27th, the planting of grain crops in Jilin was 10.7666 million mu, and the overall planting progress was faster than the same period of the previous year. According to the total sown area of grain last year (85.82 million mu), about 1/8 has been completed.
Jilin is often referred to as the “big granary”. Last year, its grain output was 38.03 million tons (rice, wheat, corn, etc.), ranking fifth in the country. People are worried that the current round of the epidemic that started in March will delay the farming season. Even if farming is resumed recently, crops may encounter changes in temperature and precipitation earlier, resulting in a reduction in production, which in turn affects the food supply across the country.
In this regard, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs said last week that Jilin is mainly affected by “preparation for spring ploughing”, that is, the preparation of agricultural machinery, agricultural tools, labor, etc.; the progress of spring ploughing (land cultivation before sowing) has basically been recovered. On the policy side, Jilin Province began to arrange fertilizer factories and other agricultural enterprises to resume work in March, and issued permits to agricultural materials transportation vehicles; on April 4, the “Work Plan on Returning Spring Farming of Farmers Detained in Changji and Jilin Cities” was released, and began to arrange migrant workers. Transfer back home.
The national regular meeting on April 13 also specifically mentioned ensuring food security, and proposed to deploy measures to further improve spring agricultural production to ensure a bumper grain harvest and a stable supply of important agricultural products. Senior said:
It is necessary to break down the annual grain sown area and output layer by layer, and urge local people to plant enough seeds and full crops in the suitable sowing period, not to abandon them, and to hold serious accountability for unfinished tasks.
All localities must strictly implement their responsibility for food security, take the overall planning of epidemic prevention and control and spring agricultural production as an important part of the assessment and evaluation, and set up special work classes to coordinate and do a good job in spring agricultural production, ensure the supply of agricultural materials and stabilize prices, and connect the production and sales of agricultural products, etc. Work.
Ensure the orderly development of spring farming. Scientific organization and guidance, ensuring that farmers who go out to go back to their hometowns to do farming, agricultural materials to enter the village, and agricultural machinery to pass through without delaying the farming season…
But the risk of food security is not only in Jilin’s spring ploughing delay. First, from the perspective of national output, Jilin accounted for only 5.7% (2020 data), and Heilongjiang and Inner Mongolia are also major producing areas (soybeans, corn), which are also worthy of attention.
click to view bigger image
Second, food is divided into people and animals. With changes in the diet structure, people directly consume less food (rations) and increase meat consumption. Each kilogram of pork consumes about 3 kilograms of grains, and beef and mutton consumption is more, driving the demand for feed grains to rise rapidly, and this part needs to be filled by imports.
In 2021, China will independently produce 682.85 million tons of grain, which will continue to grow. During the same period, the foreign food dependence also rose to a new high of 19.4%. Judging from import data, rations (rice, wheat, etc.) are basically self-sufficient, and feed grains (soybeans, corn, etc.) are more dependent on imports. Over the past decade, self-sufficiency has fallen from 22% to 14.5% for soybeans and from 99% to 90% for corn.
Global food prices have risen rapidly this year, setting new historical records several times. Among them, global grain prices rose 17% month-on-month in March, hitting a new high. China is inevitably affected. According to China’s General Administration of Customs, in the first three months of this year, the national grain import volume fell by 1.5% year-on-year, but the import value increased by 22.4%. (Lin Guangying)
click to view bigger image
Supply chain bottlenecks are so numerous that they have knocked down shipping demand
Maersk, one of the world’s largest container shipping companies, forecasts a decline in ocean freight volumes this year, with freight rates returning to normal in the second half of the year. They had just raised their full-year forecasts, driven by high container freight rates.
- Maersk’s container traffic fell by 7% from January to March this year. Full-year traffic growth is expected to be -1% to 1%. That was lower than the previous forecast of 2% to 4% growth.
- But shipping rates soared 71% year over year.
- Maersk’s global market share is about 17%.
The decrease in transportation volume in the first quarter was not because there were too many ships and insufficient cargo, but because there were many bottlenecks in the supply chain from the extraction and transportation of raw materials to the production and delivery of commodities.
- Galaxy Futures said in the report that in the first quarter, China’s industrial capacity utilization rate was 75.8%, down 1.4 percentage points from the same period last year; the manufacturing capacity utilization rate was 75.9%, down 1.7 percentage points.
- Recently, the idle capacity of container ships has increased significantly. On April 21, the restricted capacity of container ships accounted for 4.1%, an increase of 0.6 percentage points from the beginning of the month.
- As the global container port congestion has eased, Shanghai port congestion has intensified.
However, as the short-term shock passes, shipping may return to normal supply and demand in the second half of the year. The quality of the economy affects ocean freight rates and volumes. Many institutions have lowered their forecasts for global GDP growth this year. (Gong Fangyi)
Baidu, Pony.ai can test driverless taxis in Beijing
- Baidu Apollo and Pony.ai were the first to obtain the unmanned manned demonstration application notice today, and can provide this service to the public within 60 square kilometers of Beijing Yizhuang Economic Development Zone.
- During the period, companies can move the safety officer on the driverless car from the driver to the co-pilot, one step closer to complete unmanned driving.
- Zhang Ning, vice president of Pony.ai and head of the Beijing R&D Center, said in an interview this afternoon that Yizhuang is now basically introducing new policies in 2-3 months. The rear row even allows the vehicle to be unmanned.
- Baidu plans to invest 10 unmanned vehicles in the first batch, and then add another 30 unmanned vehicles. Wei Dong, vice president of Baidu’s intelligent driving business group, told “Delayed Finance” that with the successive introduction of national-level supporting management measures, it is expected that there will be a peak period in 2024-2025.
- In March, Alphabet’s self-driving company, Waymo, said it was preparing to eliminate safety guards in San Francisco, but has yet to announce a specific timetable for a fully driverless taxi service. (Cheng Manqi Wan Pei)
Google ad revenue slows; Microsoft cloud grows 46%
- Google’s parent company Alphabet’s revenue in the first quarter of this year was US$68 billion, a year-on-year growth rate of 23%; net profit was US$16.44 billion, a year-on-year decrease of 8%. Among them, the core advertising business revenue was 57.4 billion US dollars, accounting for 80% of the total revenue.
- Google’s search advertising revenue was US$39.6 billion, a year-on-year increase of 24.3%; analysts believe that it faces less competition, and the main concern is that as consumption cools, advertisers reduce investment;
- YouTube advertising revenue increased by 14.4% year-on-year, far below expectations. In addition to being affected by Eastern Europe, the main reason may be that TikTok and other industries have intensified competition;
- However, management mentioned that Youtube’s newly launched short video product doubled its daily views from the previous quarter.
- In the first quarter of this year, Microsoft’s revenue increased by 18% year-on-year to $49.4 billion, and its net profit increased by 8% to $16.7 billion. Whether Windows, Office, or the emerging cloud business Azure, all reflect strong resilience.
- CEO Nadella said: In an era of inflation, software is the only deflationary.
- The productivity and business process department revenue was US$15.8 billion, an increase of 16.5% year-on-year; analysts believe that the penetration rate of Office is already quite high, and the number of growth is limited, but there is room for price increases; in addition, due to the strong demand for corporate recruitment, Linkedin’s revenue increased by 34% year-on-year %.
- Personal Computing segment revenue of $14.5 billion, up 11.4% year over year; management said Windows sales declined as PC sales weakened;
- The cloud business was seen as the biggest driver of growth in the quarter, with revenue rising 26% year over year to $19.1 billion, with Azure revenue growing 46%. In addition to new customers, the growth may also be due to the renewal of existing customers and the increase in purchase amount. (Lin Guangying)
RMB exchange rate plummets
On April 28, the exchange rate of RMB against the US dollar fell below the four levels of 6.56, 6.58, 6.60 and 6.62 in a row. It has depreciated rapidly by 4.9% since the February 28 high of 6.3089. Dropped back to November 2020 levels.
click to view bigger image
OTHER NEWS
Guangzhou added 4 new cases of local new crown infection, and 11 people were initially screened positive.
According to the Guangzhou Municipal Health and Health Commission, as of 12:00 on the 28th, 3 new confirmed cases and 1 asymptomatic infection were added in Guangzhou, and 11 people were initially screened positive. The 4 cases of infection were discovered during routine inspections at Baiyun Airport. According to Feichangzhun data, as of 14:50, Baiyun Airport has performed 20 inbound and outbound flights today, 34 inbound and outbound flights are to be performed, and 90% of flights have been cancelled. According to “First Finance and Economics”, it has been learned from many airlines that Baiyun Airport plans to cancel all domestic passenger flights from the 29th to the 30th, and cargo and international flights are still implemented as planned.
Beijing has reported 194 cases of the novel coronavirus since April 22.
The urban areas in descending order of the number of infections are Chaoyang, Fangshan, Shunyi, Tongzhou, Fengtai, Changping, Haidian, Xicheng, Yanqing, Daxing, Dongcheng, and Shijingshan. Chaoyang accounted for 48% (94) of the reported cases.
For the first time since 4/4, the daily increase of new coronavirus in Shanghai is less than 10,000.
According to the notification issued by Shanghai, 9,764 new cases of new coronavirus infection (asymptomatic + confirmed – asymptomatic return) were added in Shanghai throughout the day on April 27, the first time since April 4 that the number of new cases was less than 10,000. At the same time, 192 non-close/sub-close-positive infected persons passed the nucleic acid screening of all staff (the official caliber is “nucleic acid screening of relevant risk groups”).
As of the 27th, Shanghai has reported a total of 545,372 people infected with the new crown, and 84% of them were asymptomatic patients for the first time. In addition, Shanghai has reported a total of 352 severe/critically ill patients and 285 deaths.
click to view bigger image
Shenzhen issued four rounds of consumer coupons on the 28th, with a total amount of 500 million yuan.
The consumption coupons will be issued from April 28 to June 30, of which the Shenzhen Municipal Bureau of Commerce and the Bureau of Culture, Radio, Television, Tourism and Sports will issue 60 million Meituan food coupons and 10 million Meituan culture, sports and tourism coupons (4.28-5.19); Shenzhen Municipal Bureau of Commerce and Bureau of Industry and Information Technology issued 400 million yuan of JD.com consumer coupons (5.1-6.30). Ele.me will also invest tens of millions in subsidies with Shenzhen brand merchants.
Due to rising raw material prices and shrinking restaurant channels, Haitian Flavor’s profit declined in the first quarter.
China’s largest soy sauce factory, Haitian Flavor, saw a slight increase of 0.72% in revenue in the first quarter of this year, and a 5.49% decrease in non-profits. The main impacts are the increase in the price of raw materials, the shrinking of catering channels, and the absorption of traffic from supermarkets and supermarkets by community group purchases. In addition, the spread of the national epidemic in the first quarter also affected the business of supermarkets, which in turn affected the Haitian flavor industry. On April 15, Haitian Flavor has mentioned these three impacts at the annual general meeting. The countermeasures mainly include accelerating the expansion of residential channels, expanding the new retail team, strengthening cooperation with Pinduoduo/Meituan, and making pre-made dishes. client.
Air China posted a net loss of 8.899 billion yuan in the first quarter, double that of the same period in 2020.
With passenger traffic dwindling and oil prices rising, the bad days for airlines are not over. In 2021, Air China will suffer the most losses among the three major airlines. The main reasons include the largest scale of wide-body aircraft, strict epidemic prevention in Beijing as the capital, the divestiture of the cargo business missed the boom period of international air cargo, and the serious loss of Cathay Pacific in which it has a stake.
70% fewer people are willing to fly out to play during the “May Day” this year.
The Civil Aviation Administration held a press conference on the 28th, saying that from the current air ticket booking situation, it is expected that the number of passengers transported by civil aviation during the “May 1st” holiday will drop by 77% year-on-year to 2 million passengers. At present, the national new crown epidemic prevention and control situation is complicated and affected. This year’s “May Day”, passengers’ willingness to travel is low.
Shouyao Holdings, which develops innovative drugs, earned 707 yuan from the sale of incubators in the first quarter.
The media reported that the money was obtained from the sale of second-hand incubators, and the Securities Department of Shouyao Holding said that “it may indeed be the news that reporters saw.” First Pharmaceutical Holdings is a small molecule innovative drug company in the clinical research stage. It went public in March this year. It plans to raise 2.1 billion yuan and actually raised 1.37 billion yuan. Their fastest-growing product is in Phase II/III clinical trials, and there is no commercial product approved for marketing, so there is no revenue.
Unilever’s revenue growth depends on raising prices, warning inflation could accelerate.
In the first quarter of this year, Unilever’s underlying sales growth, excluding the impact of foreign exchange and mergers and acquisitions, was about 7.3%, helped by an 8.3% increase in commodity prices. Its sales fell 1%. Management said it was looking for ways to use the same quality but cheaper ingredients for some commodities to avoid further price hikes. Management warned that inflation could accelerate in the second half of the year.
Higher prices in the U.S. and rising sales in Europe pushed McDonald’s revenue far more than market expectations.
In the first quarter of this year, McDonald’s reported revenue of $5.67 billion and net profit of $1.1 billion, exceeding market expectations. The two major growth drivers are price increases in the United States, and strong growth in France, the United Kingdom and Australia, with same-store revenue growth of more than 20%. Same-store sales in China decreased year-on-year in the first quarter.
50 million people use Facebook, and Wall Street has confidence in it again.
According to the first quarterly report released by Meta (Facebook), the average MAU from January to March this year was 3.64 billion (the market expected 3.65 billion), an increase of 50 million from the previous month. While iOS privacy concerns and macro challenges remain, with users coming back, coupled with better-than-expected EPS ($2.72 vs $2.56), Wall Street is less harsh on Meta, with shares up 17% premarket .
Volvo began to look for a “domestic alternative” alternative.
Due to various emergencies, the JIT model (just-in-time production) that the auto industry is used to is not working very well recently. For example, Volvo acquired by Geely has been looking for overseas suppliers to replace Chinese suppliers. The management said, “The longer the epidemic lasts, the longer The longer it is, the greater the uncertainty.”
Prosecutors allege Bill Hwang deliberately misled investment banks in a $10 billion loss-making trade.
Prosecutors in a 59-page indictment in federal court in Manhattan allege that Archegos, an investment firm controlled by Bill Hwang, underestimated the risk by misrepresenting the size of its investments, its cash reserves and the nature of its shares when it borrowed money to invest in stocks. , Bill Hwang’s investment swelled from $1.5 billion to $35 billion in one year, and because it also includes financial derivatives, the actual corresponding stock value may exceed $160 billion.
On March 21 last year, U.S. stocks such as ViacomCBS and GSX plummeted without any bad news, causing shocks on Wall Street. Soon all kinds of news spread through Wall Street through Bloomberg terminals, and some clues pointed to Bill Hwang of Archegos, referring to His high-leverage trading strategy failed and he owed huge debts to the bank, and when he couldn’t repay, the bank sold Archegos’ collateral, creating a chain reaction.
Weibo will display the user’s IP location, and the user cannot choose to close it.
Weibo announced today that it will upgrade the user’s IP territorial function in March. The IP territorial will be displayed according to the location of the user’s latest blog, comment, and vote. The domestic display will be displayed in the province/region, and the foreign display will be displayed in the country, comment area, and personal homepage. are visible and cannot be closed. Weibo said that the launch of the new function is to reduce acts such as impersonating hot parties, malicious rumors, and rubbing traffic.
Apple began to sell original parts, users can DIY their own iPhone.
Apple has opened a new self-service repair online store. Users can also purchase or rent repair tools, purchase replacement parts, and refer to the “Repair Guide” to repair some problems on the iPhone 12 and 13 and the new iPhone SE models by themselves. Repair shops don’t currently sell Apple chips, nor are they stocked with Mac computer parts and tools. However, it seems that repairing the mobile phone yourself is not much cheaper than the official repair. For example, the battery price of the iPhone 13 Pro in the store is 69 US dollars (about 456 yuan), but the official repair fee is 519 yuan, if you buy it during the warranty period or before. AppleCare+, you can also replace it for free.
Indonesia expands export ban on edible oil.
The Indonesian government announced on the 27th local time that it will ban the export of crude palm oil, refined palm oil and used edible oil from the 28th. Indonesia has previously raised export taxes on palm oil and has also announced a ban on exports of the country’s edible oil and its raw materials. This is because of the impact of the war, the international price of palm oil is higher than the domestic price in Indonesia, and many Indonesian palm oil producers have increased exports in order to obtain higher profits, resulting in insufficient domestic supply in Indonesia. The average retail price of edible palm oil in Indonesia has skyrocketed, with prices rising by more than 40%.
PUMA warned that geopolitical conflicts, inflation will continue to affect earnings this year.
In the first quarter of this year, PUMA sales increased by 19.7% year-on-year to 1.912 billion euros, of which sales in the Americas increased by more than 40%, and sales in the Asia-Pacific region fell by 17%. However, geopolitical conflicts, rising prices of raw materials and shipping costs dragged down the gross profit margin to 47.2%. Management expects these issues to continue this year, with a possible impact on full-year profits.
US GDP fell 1.4% in the first quarter.
A drop in fixed investment, defense spending and record trade imbalances weighed on growth. Market expectations had been for an increase of 1.0%. The media said that the rise in the number of infections in Omicron has slowed down economic activities, and high inflation has also suppressed residents’ desire to consume. The U.S. price index rose 8% in the first quarter. Wall Street analysts have low expectations for a U.S. recession, but in response to fast-growing prices, the Federal Reserve plans to implement a series of interest rate hikes that will dampen economic growth most of the time.
The above briefings are provided by Lin Guangying, Gong Fangyi, and intern Yi Silin
Title image: “Interstellar” stills.
This article is reproduced from: https://www.latepost.com/news/dj_detail?id=1122
This site is for inclusion only, and the copyright belongs to the original author.